Case study · Industrial equipment
Fewer leads, better leads, more orders
A manufacturer's paid search produced plenty of form submissions and very few orders, and the sales team had stopped trusting them. This is how we connected Google Ads to the CRM and managed the account against qualified enquiries and revenue.
Project overview
Paid search managed against revenue.
- Industry
- Industrial equipment
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Paid search management
- Platform
- Google Ads + CRM
- Timeline
- 12–16 weeks
- Team
- 3 people
- Sales cycle
- Weeks to months
- Measurement
- Qualified enquiries and orders
- Integration
- Offline conversion import
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
Success was defined with the sales director before any campaign was changed.
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30–50%
Lower cost per qualified enquiry
Budget moves to the searches that produce real buyers.
Target range; qualified status recorded by sales in the CRM
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2–3×
Return on advertising spend
Bidding is trained on orders, not on form submissions.
Target range over two sales cycles
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40–60%
Fewer unqualified form submissions
Students, job seekers and consumers are filtered out before sales see them.
Measured by the sales team's own classification
Business challenges
How paid search worked before
The account was optimised for the only thing it could see: forms.
Conversions
Every form submission counted the same, whatever it was worth.
Keywords
Broad terms attracted researchers, students and job seekers.
Landing pages
All adverts led to the home page.
Sales
The sales team saw most web leads as a waste of time.
Reporting
Marketing reported leads; finance asked about orders.
Proposed solution
What the paid search rebuild covered
Tracking first. An account can only optimise towards what it is told.
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Offline conversion tracking
Qualified and won enquiries sent back from the CRM to Google Ads.
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Account structure
Campaigns by product line and buying intent, with strict negative keywords.
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Landing pages
A page per product line, with a form that asks qualifying questions.
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Value-based bidding
Bids set on the value of qualified enquiries.
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Audience exclusions
Job seekers, students and existing customers excluded.
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Revenue reporting
Spend, qualified enquiries and orders in one report.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was a lower cost per lead. After a conversation with the sales director it became a different goal: fewer leads, as long as they were real.
The qualifying questions on the form were written with sales. They reduced the number of submissions and raised the number of conversations worth having.
What the project had to deliver
- 01Enquiries sales want to call
- 02Spend measured against orders
- 03Landing pages that qualify
- 04One report for marketing and finance
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
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A long sales cycle before revenue is known
What we did
Bidding used qualified enquiries as an early signal, with orders imported as they closed.
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Low search volume for specialist products
What we did
Campaigns were built around exact product and application terms, accepting low volume for high intent.
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A CRM where lead status was not always updated
What we did
Lead status was made a required field, with a weekly check on enquiries left unclassified.
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Distributors bidding on the same terms
What we did
Adverts and landing pages led with what only the manufacturer could offer: specification support and direct pricing.
What we watched for
- Agree what a good lead is with sales
- Import offline conversions before optimising
- Let the form qualify
- Judge over a full sales cycle
Development process
Connect the CRM before touching the bids
Nothing in the account was changed until its results could be measured properly.
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Definitions
Qualified and unqualified defined with sales.
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Tracking
Offline conversions imported from the CRM.
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Restructure
Campaigns rebuilt by product line and intent.
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Landing pages
Pages and qualifying forms released per product line.
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Bidding
Value-based bidding switched on once enough data existed.
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Monthly review
Spend reviewed against qualified enquiries and orders.
Technology stack
Ads connected to the CRM
The account optimises towards revenue because it can now see it.
Advertising
- Google Ads
- Microsoft Advertising
- Performance Max
Measurement
- Google Analytics 4
- Server-side conversion tracking
- Offline conversion import
Data
- CRM revenue data
- Looker Studio
- Product feed
Testing
- Landing page experiments
- Ad copy tests
- Budget pacing alerts
Quality assurance & deployment
Checked before it went live, measured after
Marketing work is only as good as its measurement. Tracking was verified before anything launched, technical changes were tested on staging, and every result was reconciled with the client's own sales or booking data.
- Conversion tracking tested end to end before launch
- Technical changes checked on staging with a full crawl
- Redirects, links and structured data validated
- Copy and claims reviewed by the client's experts
- Reported figures reconciled with the client's own system
Deployment
- 01BiddingValue-based bidding switched on once enough data existed.
- 02Monthly reviewSpend reviewed against qualified enquiries and orders.
- 03Staged releasesChanges went live in small batches, each one watched in the first days.
- 04Reporting and handoverA monthly review against the agreed targets, and documentation the client's team can work from.
Final deliverables
A channel sales and finance both believe
Sales now receive fewer web enquiries and call all of them. Finance sees advertising spend next to the orders it produced.
The client's marketing manager has the definitions, the tracking and the report to run reviews without us in the room.
- Enquiries qualified before sales see them
- Bidding trained on real value
- A page for every product line
- Spend and orders in one report
Handed over to the client
- 01Audit and roadmapFindings ranked by their effect
- 02Implemented changesIn the client's own site, accounts and tools
- 03Tracking and dashboardResults in the client's own figures
- 04Content and campaign assetsTemplates, pages and creative
- 05Documentation and trainingSo the client's team can carry on
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Lower cost per qualified enquiry | 30–50% | Target range; qualified status recorded by sales in the CRM |
| Return on advertising spend | 2–3× | Target range over two sales cycles |
| Fewer unqualified form submissions | 40–60% | Measured by the sales team's own classification |
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